The curious case of Tinubu’s familiar rivals — by Folabi Ogunleye

This is especially true of those who were friends and acquaintances of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu on the way up, from the days of small beginnings: After they experienced the familiarity of shared space with him through the years, they slowly develped a curious need to prove to the world that they know the man better than the world knows him.

These folks want the world to know that Bola Tinubu is just an ordinary man (which he is) like them (which he is not), with whom they shared very normal experiences. They want everyone to know that the man shits and farts and sleeps and wakes; that he smoked cigarettes around them, dozed off and snored around them; that they know the manner of his birth and raising (yínmú), among other knowings.

Some of these people get carried away further by their assumed knowings and, wittingly or otherwise, find themselves competing against the man. The proximity they once had to him seems to persuade them that they know all there is to him, enough for them to hold the view that ‘there is nothing special about him’, while overlooking the truth deeply embedded in the Yorùbá thought that Orí or Àyànmọ́ varies from one person to another.

From such a mindset, familiarity can gradually mutate into rivalry. Some begin competing against Tinubu, or sponsoring or joining efforts to undermine the man or his influence. In some instances, one cannot help but wonder if familiarity merely ripened into envy or resentment, particularly where former associates find themselves, or people close to them, having to depend upon the very man they once regarded simply as one of their own, or defer to him in one way, shape or form.

Perhaps it is why some of these people are openly disrespectful of Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Ọmọ Olódó Idẹ, Jagaban of Borgu Kingdom, former senator, former two-term Executive governor of Lagos State, a leader of the All Progressive Progress party, and the incumbent president and commander-in-chief of the largest political entity of Black people on the face of the earth, the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

They say a man emerged from ‘The Depth’ – that he ‘Ti Inú Ibú Wá’ (Tinubu) and these people purport to have fathomed him well enough to undermine him.

It is my opinion that Bola Ahmed Tinubu is an unusual human personality who has lived his entire life being underestimated by people around him, save for a few better discerning ones who know better than to bet against the man. Perhaps, people underestimating Tinubu is the masterkey to his unbroken streak of political successes.

Tinubu does not look the part, especially now that he is older and has lost the spunk of youth. Neither does he sound the part (he is not your orator in say, the way Ladoke Akintola was one) and does not boast of the kind of political pedigree or dynasty that simply opens doors for offsprings of such heritage. But there seems to be some peculiar blessing of providence which, allied with considerable brains and political acumen, has kept making a way for him.

While quite a few condescendingly fixate on their belief that Bola Tinubu has no pedigree and other such snobbish preenings (‘Who is his father?’ and so forth – forgetting that God is often Father to the fatherless), and that the last (according to our imperfect human reckoning) may yet the first, others have a grounded appreciation for Tinubu’s existence as the uncommon-yet-imperfect human personality that he is.

Familiarity indeed breeds contempt. And perhaps some of Tinubu’s most disturbingly intriguing rivals are precisely those who stood closest to him. They include former confidants and lieutenants, friends and acquaintances who, somewhere along the journey, evolved into adversaries.

There is a peculiar temptation in having known a man before the world knew him. You remember his ordinariness and begin to mistake that familiarity for equality of destiny. You know where he slept, what he ate, how he laughed and perhaps how he snored and imagine, therefore, that you know the limits of what he can become.

But knowing a man’s habits is not the same as knowing his Orí. The Universe is too vast, and the mysteries of the human destiny is too deep, for the human man to comprehend completely.

God, afterall, works in mysterious ways.